Driverless cars will be safer than human drivers, but there’s a catch

AP/Tony Avelar Several automakers are looking to have driverless cars ready by 2020, launching what will almost certainly be the decade of self-driving vehicles.

And in a lot of ways, that's a good thing. They provide a means of transportation for people who can't get around easily and are also a lot safer than human drivers of any age or experience level.

But for them to actually be safer than humans, there's still a large hurdle to overcome — getting other humans off the road.

This was something Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and StarTalk Radio host, pointed out an interview with popular technology reviewer Marques Brownlee.

Brownlee pointed out how driverless cars, with the exception of Google, are being built without steering wheels so a driver can take over if something goes wrong.

But as Tyson pointed out: "The fact that you say that implies that something would go wrong with the machine that the human can correct, rather than something going wrong with the human that the machine needs to correct. Because last I checked all those accidents on the street are humans messing up."

And when it comes to driverless cars that have gotten in accidents, the large majority of the time it's been us humans that are at fault. Google driverless cars have been in 19 minor accidents, and only one time has the self-driving car been at fault.

DeGrasse Tyson pointed out that when you have an entire system of driverless cars, you get this "moving coordinate system." All the cars can communicate with each other about where they are going in a far more sophisticated manner than turning on your blinker. They can weave in and out of lanes knowing exactly what's going on around them with full awareness of what's ahead.

When you add humans to the mix, accidents are bound to happen. That's why for driverless cars to truly be successful, human drivers would need to become a thing of the past.

"If cars do all the driving on the road, then in principle you can up the speed limit," deGrasse Tyson said. "Right? Because you're not at risk for reaction time — a car can way outperform a human, so I imagine you go 150 to 200 miles per hour down the road."